Nov 11, 2021 is the date of the article which discusses observability in serverless applications and its importance. Observability helps us understand what's happening in our application and troubleshoot problems when they arise, making it an essential part of running production workloads. The author compares using native AWS services with building a custom solution using third-party services such as Lumigo, highlighting the benefits of using a specialized vendor like Lumigo for a better developer experience. Lumigo offers features like 1-click auth-tracing, capturing contextual information, and built-in alerting, which are not available in native AWS services. The author suggests that while native AWS services have limitations, they can still be used to achieve observability with some engineering effort. However, using a third-party service like Lumigo can provide a more productive experience for developers and save time in troubleshooting and problem-solving.